Hey, I have a general question on monthly payment for anyone who has experience with online games. I've never played a MMOG before, and so I'm going to have to get used to paying $9.95 a month on the internet. The problem is that I'll be in school till next summer when I have to give up the broadband and move back home. So I'm worried I won't be able to play Uru as much as I'd like. So my question is whether I can sign up for a month, unsign for the next month if I have too much work, and sign up again the third month without too much trouble like making a new Uru Live account, reinstalling Uru, starting a new avatar, etc.

Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 4:30 pmPosts: 1409Location: Canadian lost in Nebraska

That's a good question.

What you described sounds very reasonable. I don't see why you couldn't cancel membership and then renew at a later date and start a brand new character.

But what would be most helpful for you (IMO) would be the ability to suspend your account temporarily while KEEPING you character and progress intact for a time... with the ability to restart your old account and character.

I'd say post what you'd like to see in the suggestions section of the forums. Sounds like a reasonable request to me!

My brief forray into Matrix Online (get very dull lots of mirroring and no story) I had my months free subscription and paid for a month, then forgot about it and decided not to renew my subscription. The four months later I logged into my Sony Account again and renewed my subscription.

My charracter was tied to the account so unless I deleted the account he remained even tho i couldn't use him

Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 8:06 pmPosts: 6235Location: Everywhere, all at once

There have been prior discussions that this can be abused by renewing for a month out of the year to allow new content to accumulate, then play all of it for a month, and go away again. $10 a year instead of $120 would hurt the providers (Cyan/GameTap). If the providers allow it, that's their choice, but it would be unfair of the subscribers to exploit it. How do other providers prevent this sort of thing?

That's a valid concern, but at the same time who on earth would be able to
explore a year's woth of Uru content (up to 12 ages plus story etc.) in just a month? Plus you would miss out on the story itself, and URU is about story as much as ages.

There have been prior discussions that this can be abused by renewing for a month out of the year to allow new content to accumulate, then play all of it for a month, and go away again. $10 a year instead of $120 would hurt the providers (Cyan/GameTap). If the providers allow it, that's their choice, but it would be unfair of the subscribers to exploit it. How do other providers prevent this sort of thing?

It depends... If the game is still planned as it was supposed to be 4 years ago, that wouldn't be a big issue...
New content is one thing but if you miss all that is related to it you cheat yourself out of the fun...

A lot of the Ages are geared toward simple exploration or player hangouts (the Eders, to use an example) or non-puzzle exploration (Negilahn, if it ever shows up). Some events may happen that require en-masse player collaboration (lighting the cavern, calibrating the GZ) which, if you miss them, you won't have the chance to repeat, and heck, there's so much more planned that we don't know about. There's a lot more to Uru than solving a bunch of puzzles, and if you decide to only focus on that, you'll be missing out on a lot of the stuff that makes Uru awesome.

Anyone who pays for only one month out of the year to let content accumulate is doing themselves a HUGE disservice.

Yes, we intend to keep your progress even if you unsubscribe, so you will not have lost your progress if you resubscribe later.

We have given a great deal of thought to the issue of people who want to "abuse" this by unsubscribing for a while and then resubscribing later just to get the latest content for less money. However, the exact details have not yet been set in stone.

I will say that our philosophy is to reward those who keep their subscriptions current rather than punishing (taking things away) from those who let their subscriptions lapse.

I hope there will be a "year subscription" option for players who would like to go that route. It seems that such an option would give the renewed project a good financial kickstart and showing of support.

It seems to be the general model that other online games allow you to subscribe at a monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual rate, with discounts offered to those who sign on for the longer time periods. (Some even offer hourly rates!)
I assume this is the sort of "reward" RAWA was speaking of - though it would be cool if there were in-game rewards as well.